With the practice (and the ilvl boost) we are finally making progress in heroics.
A couple more first kills, Orgegorger and Ka'graz (bit of a fluke), and we are now up to 4/10HC.
Ix was away one night and we had an excellent night of wipes on Oregorger (George) with Kissez leading the raid.
No kill but it was a lot of fun and we came very close on a couple of occasions, with one agonising wipe at 200k HP. That's Touch of Death territory but alas, we don't have a monk.
We played around with a few different tactics for the rolling phase but found our best to be splitting into two groups, melee and ranged. Melee would concentrate on the inside while ranged focussed on the outer boxes, following me to keep safe.
Now, I am normally fine with avoiding the giant rolling Goren and it was even my suggestion that people could follow me if they weren't too sure themselves... cue a succession of attempts with me making poor decisions, getting hit, running down blind alleys etc.
Bloody typical! I say people can follow me then fall to pieces and get them all killed... repeatedly.
Of course, I was the butt of a few jokes for a while. Follow Sol... to your death!
It was all good fun though and we all improved to the point that we were seeing the later phases a lot more often.
The kill didn't come that night but we knew it was close. Next raid night Ix wanted to have another go at Imperator Mar'gok but was convinced to go back into BRF for another go at George.
The decision paid off immediately! First pull of the night and George was no more.
I expected us to go to Darmac next, we had been making some decent progress on the fight and didn't look too far away from a kill. Instead, Ix took us to Flamebender Ka'graz...
We had a few looks at the fight, adjusted positioning etc and made small improvements but didn't really look very close to a kill... until, on the final attempt of the night, it just died!
It was quite incredible, none of our other attempts made it past 50% but everything just came together on that one attempt.
So, two new bosses down in one night. One with the first pull, one with the last.
The team selection decisions are finally paying off in terms of progress, the team always feels capable of killing something even if we don't always manage it.
But, as Artosis would say... At what cost?
Sign-ups have been dropping gradually, those on the periphery of the team knowing they aren't going to be picked are just not bothering to turn up.
We need to be more inclusive, find a balance between pushing progression and playing as a guild rather than a 10-man team within a guild. Or so I thought...
In the past week there has been talk of a merger with another guild on Arathor, bringing the two raid rosters together to form one team capable of clearing content and with the numbers to eventually attempt Mythic should we get that far.
A trial raid was arranged, a run through BRF normal, and all available raiders from both sides joined in.
It was a fun night, we killed 8/10 including a kill on Blast Furnace which was progress for both guilds. We even had a follow-up night, killing Iron Maidens and making excellent progress on Blackhand himself (11% was our best attempt, closing in on the kill)
Both nights have been very positive and we are planning joint raids for the next two weeks to see how things go. We seem like a very good match in both skill and attitude so I'm hopeful it will become something more permanent.
I love raiding is a bigger group, the atmosphere is great and the fights just feel more epic. It really made me realise how much I've missed the 25-man raids of my former horde guild.
To be honest, it just feels like this is the way it was meant to be done.
Tuesday 31 March 2015
Thursday 19 March 2015
BRF heroic this week
The 5 ilvl boost kicks in for our raid tonight... I'm hoping the extra 5 ilvls magically makes us able to avoid the fire or, more accurately, a giant rolling Goren.
Last night's raid saw us making heavy going of Hans and Franz, taking up almost 2 hours of our raid night. Familiar issues, cooldowns missed on the suplex and far too many hits from the stamps during Pulverise.
We did have a couple of people in there that hadn't killed it on heroic so a few more mistakes were to be expected I suppose.
It is a very frustrating time for our raids at the moment though, progress is very hard to come by and it seemed like we were taking a step backwards on a boss we had comfortably killed (much quicker) for the last couple of weeks. Time spent wiping on this was time we wanted to be spending on much-needed practice on our progress bosses.
To make it worse, my BiS mace dropped. Yes, I know that should make it better but I passed on it because our other shaman was still using a dungeon blue weapon.
If it had been any other player I wouldn't have thought twice about it, I'm happy to pass if it's a huge upgrade for someone else, but the shaman is very unreliable and flaky.
(It doesn't help that I crafted her some gear for her monk just before she decided to switch to shaman)
It was haste/multi as well, which are not good stats for Resto. so she will swap it out the first opportunity she gets. To add insult to injury, I rolled the chest which is the second time I've rolled something useless on this boss. Haha, I'm even more bitter about this than I thought!
It's the first boss on our kill list each week though so I'm hoping it will drop again at some point.
I was generally happy with my performance on the fight itself. First attempt I was hit by a couple of the presses but wasn't hit again all night so I'm just putting that first one down to rustiness :-)
Finished second on dps behind Kissez, our hunter, which should be expected given the amount of movement in the fight but she hadn't got close before so I was a little surprised.
On to Gruul, much less movement so should be back on top...
After taking so long on H&F I wasn't overly confident as we headed to Gruul.
It's easy for one of the tanks to make a mistake and cause a wipe, or our raiders to be slow to move, so I was ready for the long haul and kill on the last attempt of the night (like the previous week).
You've guessed it, 1-shot.
Incredibly smooth kill, way inside the enrage timer for the first time. Can we officially designate this boss as our first heroic to be 'on farm'? Too late, I've done it. Gruul hc is on farm.
DPS check... Second again behind Kissez! Hmmm... she seems to have stepped up her game here, I wasn't even close. Will have to take a look at how I can improve for our next attempts.
Caught up a bit on Gruul so we had time for a look at Oregorger again...
Before the raid I was talking to Ix (our RL) about the LOS gaming tactic, where you all run in a group and kill the boxes one by one. Ix decided to give it a go but I don't think he was really prepared for it, it didn't seem like he had thought it through.
We had enough problems even getting to that phase though. I'm not even sure what was going wrong most of the time, people just kept dying.
And when we did make it to the rolling phase there were lots of deaths there too.
Another boss we seem to be going backwards on :-s
I think our best chance of a new kill lies with Darmac.
Tighten up the tanks' positioning, avoid the spears, and we should make it deep into the fight.
Team Selection...
Ix is persisting with the 10-man team to push progression.
This seems to have come from the recap meetings when a number of people said there were no consequences for people failing on mechanics or performing poorly.
I'm all for picking the best possible team, giving us the best chance of killing a boss, but why restrict it to 10-man? If an extra player would not weaken the team, would in fact strengthen the team, why not take them?
We are running 2/3/5 now every night which puts us heavy on healers. Back in the day our only option would be to swap that third healer for a dps, putting a lot of pressure on the two remaining healers.
These days we can just add an extra dps, go with 2/3/6 and the team is stronger over all.
Flex gives us a huge advantage and I can't see any reason not to use it.
Tonight is likely to be Flamebinder Ka'graz to give us a break from our struggles on Oregorger and Darmac.
It will be the first time we have attempted it on heroic and it might be worthwhile to take as many people as possible so they can see the fight.
It will probably be 10-man though, attempting to 1-shot him.
Wish us luck!
Last night's raid saw us making heavy going of Hans and Franz, taking up almost 2 hours of our raid night. Familiar issues, cooldowns missed on the suplex and far too many hits from the stamps during Pulverise.
We did have a couple of people in there that hadn't killed it on heroic so a few more mistakes were to be expected I suppose.
It is a very frustrating time for our raids at the moment though, progress is very hard to come by and it seemed like we were taking a step backwards on a boss we had comfortably killed (much quicker) for the last couple of weeks. Time spent wiping on this was time we wanted to be spending on much-needed practice on our progress bosses.
To make it worse, my BiS mace dropped. Yes, I know that should make it better but I passed on it because our other shaman was still using a dungeon blue weapon.
If it had been any other player I wouldn't have thought twice about it, I'm happy to pass if it's a huge upgrade for someone else, but the shaman is very unreliable and flaky.
(It doesn't help that I crafted her some gear for her monk just before she decided to switch to shaman)
It was haste/multi as well, which are not good stats for Resto. so she will swap it out the first opportunity she gets. To add insult to injury, I rolled the chest which is the second time I've rolled something useless on this boss. Haha, I'm even more bitter about this than I thought!
It's the first boss on our kill list each week though so I'm hoping it will drop again at some point.
I was generally happy with my performance on the fight itself. First attempt I was hit by a couple of the presses but wasn't hit again all night so I'm just putting that first one down to rustiness :-)
Finished second on dps behind Kissez, our hunter, which should be expected given the amount of movement in the fight but she hadn't got close before so I was a little surprised.
On to Gruul, much less movement so should be back on top...
After taking so long on H&F I wasn't overly confident as we headed to Gruul.
It's easy for one of the tanks to make a mistake and cause a wipe, or our raiders to be slow to move, so I was ready for the long haul and kill on the last attempt of the night (like the previous week).
You've guessed it, 1-shot.
Incredibly smooth kill, way inside the enrage timer for the first time. Can we officially designate this boss as our first heroic to be 'on farm'? Too late, I've done it. Gruul hc is on farm.
DPS check... Second again behind Kissez! Hmmm... she seems to have stepped up her game here, I wasn't even close. Will have to take a look at how I can improve for our next attempts.
Caught up a bit on Gruul so we had time for a look at Oregorger again...
Before the raid I was talking to Ix (our RL) about the LOS gaming tactic, where you all run in a group and kill the boxes one by one. Ix decided to give it a go but I don't think he was really prepared for it, it didn't seem like he had thought it through.
We had enough problems even getting to that phase though. I'm not even sure what was going wrong most of the time, people just kept dying.
And when we did make it to the rolling phase there were lots of deaths there too.
Another boss we seem to be going backwards on :-s
I think our best chance of a new kill lies with Darmac.
Tighten up the tanks' positioning, avoid the spears, and we should make it deep into the fight.
Team Selection...
Ix is persisting with the 10-man team to push progression.
This seems to have come from the recap meetings when a number of people said there were no consequences for people failing on mechanics or performing poorly.
I'm all for picking the best possible team, giving us the best chance of killing a boss, but why restrict it to 10-man? If an extra player would not weaken the team, would in fact strengthen the team, why not take them?
We are running 2/3/5 now every night which puts us heavy on healers. Back in the day our only option would be to swap that third healer for a dps, putting a lot of pressure on the two remaining healers.
These days we can just add an extra dps, go with 2/3/6 and the team is stronger over all.
Flex gives us a huge advantage and I can't see any reason not to use it.
Tonight is likely to be Flamebinder Ka'graz to give us a break from our struggles on Oregorger and Darmac.
It will be the first time we have attempted it on heroic and it might be worthwhile to take as many people as possible so they can see the fight.
It will probably be 10-man though, attempting to 1-shot him.
Wish us luck!
Monday 9 March 2015
It's About Time...
If I had a readership this is the point at which I would apologise for my absence and lack of posts.
Given the lack of said readership I will just head straight into what I've been up to since I last posted but promise to post more often just in case some lost soul lands on these shores and needs something to read.
So, where were we...?
I left you having just transferred my shaman over to horde for some heroic progression in Siege of Orgrimmar.
It didn't take long to overtake the progress I had made on my rogue and I was quickly up to speed with the rest of the guild.
We then quickly made it to 8/13HC and were progressing on Spoils when the sign-ups started to drop a little, the malaise was spreading here too.
It turns out it was only a blip and the sign-ups came back strongly with the pre-expansion patch but I was already considering what I wanted to do in WoD and making preparations.
It was a great deal of fun running 25-man heroics and the number of players at a very similar standard to myself mean there was some fantastic competition in the team.
This wasn't enough though, I wanted to be raiding with friends again.
The horde guild was full of good people and I'm sure I would have made friends there anyway but I missed my old friends and decided to move back to my old guild.
Of course, when I got there, most people were taking a break or just chilling out waiting for the expansion to arrive. So we just ran a few raids to finish off achievements for people and have some fun while we waited.
Warlords of Draenor
Much excitement with the launch of the new expansion, new content at long last!
Unfortunately, the launch was pretty much a disaster.
Getting into Draenor was difficult enough with Khadgar absolutely swamped with people trying to talk him into leading them, one by one, through the portal.
Thankfully, he quickly remembered he was a mage, cast Mirror Image and sent those images off to the major cities of Azeroth. The crowds dispersed and we could make our way through the portal.
The opening scenes are fantastic, setting the scene perfectly for what we will be facing (at least initially) in this alternate Draenor.
There was some dubious decision-making along the way though, setting Gul'dan free is bound to come back to bite us at some point.
Welcome to Draenor achievements flashed up almost constantly in guild chat but this is the point it really fell to pieces.
The flagship feature of the expansion, Garrisons, just didn't work. Well, not the garrisons themselves but the Instancing technology that they were built on. It was overloaded by the massive demand and couldn't cope.
To make it worse, virtually all of the opening quests required the garrison in one way or another. And the final nail in the coffin was the fact that all of the flightpaths passed through the garrison too.
Chaos and frustration ensued as the whole server spent the best part of a week trying to go into/out of/over/under/round their garrisons and failing miserably.
The issues were finally sorted out and we were all free to enjoy questing through one of the best levelling experiences I have ever witnessed.
Beautifully crafted zones, varied and interesting questlines, NPCs with character and depth, all contributed to me almost regretting hitting 100. I didn't want it to end so quickly, I didn't really want it to end at all.
I frequently (and gleefully) allowed myself to be distracted by the numerous rares and treasures around the zones, so much glorious content to do.
But hit 100 I did and began the gearing ready for our first raid. This led me into the heroic dungeons which I also enjoyed immensely, much higher in difficulty that their MoP equivalents and challenging once more in our questing greens.
Posts on gearing up, dungeons and raiding to come "soon"
Note to self: Soon < 6 months.
Given the lack of said readership I will just head straight into what I've been up to since I last posted but promise to post more often just in case some lost soul lands on these shores and needs something to read.
So, where were we...?
I left you having just transferred my shaman over to horde for some heroic progression in Siege of Orgrimmar.
It didn't take long to overtake the progress I had made on my rogue and I was quickly up to speed with the rest of the guild.
We then quickly made it to 8/13HC and were progressing on Spoils when the sign-ups started to drop a little, the malaise was spreading here too.
It turns out it was only a blip and the sign-ups came back strongly with the pre-expansion patch but I was already considering what I wanted to do in WoD and making preparations.
It was a great deal of fun running 25-man heroics and the number of players at a very similar standard to myself mean there was some fantastic competition in the team.
This wasn't enough though, I wanted to be raiding with friends again.
The horde guild was full of good people and I'm sure I would have made friends there anyway but I missed my old friends and decided to move back to my old guild.
Of course, when I got there, most people were taking a break or just chilling out waiting for the expansion to arrive. So we just ran a few raids to finish off achievements for people and have some fun while we waited.
Warlords of Draenor
Much excitement with the launch of the new expansion, new content at long last!
Unfortunately, the launch was pretty much a disaster.
Getting into Draenor was difficult enough with Khadgar absolutely swamped with people trying to talk him into leading them, one by one, through the portal.
Thankfully, he quickly remembered he was a mage, cast Mirror Image and sent those images off to the major cities of Azeroth. The crowds dispersed and we could make our way through the portal.
The opening scenes are fantastic, setting the scene perfectly for what we will be facing (at least initially) in this alternate Draenor.
There was some dubious decision-making along the way though, setting Gul'dan free is bound to come back to bite us at some point.
Welcome to Draenor achievements flashed up almost constantly in guild chat but this is the point it really fell to pieces.
The flagship feature of the expansion, Garrisons, just didn't work. Well, not the garrisons themselves but the Instancing technology that they were built on. It was overloaded by the massive demand and couldn't cope.
To make it worse, virtually all of the opening quests required the garrison in one way or another. And the final nail in the coffin was the fact that all of the flightpaths passed through the garrison too.
Chaos and frustration ensued as the whole server spent the best part of a week trying to go into/out of/over/under/round their garrisons and failing miserably.
The issues were finally sorted out and we were all free to enjoy questing through one of the best levelling experiences I have ever witnessed.
Beautifully crafted zones, varied and interesting questlines, NPCs with character and depth, all contributed to me almost regretting hitting 100. I didn't want it to end so quickly, I didn't really want it to end at all.
I frequently (and gleefully) allowed myself to be distracted by the numerous rares and treasures around the zones, so much glorious content to do.
But hit 100 I did and began the gearing ready for our first raid. This led me into the heroic dungeons which I also enjoyed immensely, much higher in difficulty that their MoP equivalents and challenging once more in our questing greens.
Posts on gearing up, dungeons and raiding to come "soon"
Note to self: Soon < 6 months.
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